


all herondales fear ducks

by phoenicopteridae



Category: The Dark Artifices Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare, The Wicked Powers Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: first tsc fic!, kit and mina are soft, kit in devon, kit vows revenge against all ducks, mild kitty angst, mina is the best child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24297325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenicopteridae/pseuds/phoenicopteridae
Summary: “Kit! Issa duck!” Min’s chubby pointer finger waved wildly at one of the ducks.“You are a hundred percent correct,” Kit said to her, fondly watching and following a small distance behind her as she made her way around the edge of the water to get a closer look.
Relationships: Jem Carstairs/Tessa Gray, Mina Carstairs & Kit Rook, Tiberius Blackthorn/Kit Rook
Comments: 6
Kudos: 107





	all herondales fear ducks

**Author's Note:**

> kit & mina as the best siblings ever. i love them more than i love myself (which is not saying a lot, but yeah)

Devon was marshy after rain, the ground soft underneath Kit’s rainboots and the sound of frogs becoming familiar background noise. Like most of England, the climate tended to be damp, foggy and cool, which was strange compared to his childhood in hot, sunny Los Angeles, but over the past two years, Kit had gotten used to wearing multiple layers of clothes even inside the house.

Once Tessa and Jem had gotten over their initial intense overprotectiveness of Min, they’d let Kit start taking her outside in the stroller. It was nice to walk in the slightly boggy post-rain air and breathe in the petrichor, leaning over the top of the scooter to make a face at Min-Min and send her into jubilant fits of laughter. 

She’d jabber on with him once she started talking, pointing at everything and naming it. “Issa tree!” she’d say, or: “Kit! Kit, look! Issa birdy!” 

The first time she’d seen a frog had been an… interesting experience. Kit, Jem, and Tessa had learned the hard way how small children tended to mispronounce the word ‘frog,’ which happened to be a very vulgar expletive. Kit had been forced to stop walking because he was bent double with laughter, and he giggled at it all the way home. 

When they’d gotten home, and Mina had started to tell her parents that she’d seen a ‘fuck,’ Kit had narrowly dodged a long talking-to from a very upset Jem and Tessa by quickly explaining the mispronunciation.

Around that time, she’d also started walking, which meant that if Kit looked away from her for even five seconds, she’d already be somewhere off the trail, and he’d have to chase after her for a minute or two before she finally tired and he could swing her up into his arms. She liked that, when he’d pick her up and swing her around. Jem used to tense up when Kit spun Min-Min around nearby, like he was afraid Kit would drop her, but it had become commonplace. Sometimes, she’d just traipse into his room with her arms outstretched and demand that ‘Kit spin me ‘round and ‘round now!’ He’d get up from his desk or from his bed and reach down to grab her waist, lifting her up and turning in circles and grinning helplessly at her excited squeals.

When he looked at Mina, he felt an unbelievable surge of love and an intense innate desire to protect her. He’d ideated about having a sibling before Min-Min was born, having seen the Blackthorns and their closely knit bond; he’d experienced a taste of that when he’d taught Dru how to lock-pick. What he had now was even better: a tiny, feisty, bubbly girl who treated him like a god. He knew that he would give his life for her now, that he would kill for her, that if anyone ever hurt her, he would hunt them down and give them what they deserved. The first time he’d held her, and looked down into her tiny, squalling face, the feeling was already there. She was his little sister, and he would give the world and more for her.

It had rained two days ago, which meant that although the ground gave way slightly, it wasn’t entirely muddy. In other words, it was the perfect day to go out with Mina. Kit announced their departure loudly to the whole house as Min-Min settled in the stroller with a blithe smile. He closed the door behind him after hearing Tessa’s call of affirmation and stepped out into the damp, late morning air. His breath fogged as he exhaled, and Mina’s small, chubby arms waved around as she babbled on. 

“We goin’ onna walk, Kit!”

“Yep! We’re going for a walk on the trail.”

“Onna trail!”

Kit smiled as he pushed the stroller along to the trail near the house. It was long, and went through fields and patches of trees. He was pretty sure it also went into the nearby Dartmoor National Park, although he’d never really explored that far. Most of the time with Mina, he’d walk down to a small pond and then walk back up.

“Kit, wanna walk now!” Min said, pushing herself forward and standing in the stroller seat so that she could look around the side at Kit’s face. He scowled slightly. 

“Min-Min, don’t stand in your stroller. You might fall, and your mom and dad would be very unhappy with me if you got hurt on my watch.” Kit stopped walking and went around to unbuckle Min from her stroller, lifting her up and setting her on the ground. She pattered around in her bright yellow rainboots (or, as the locals called them, wellies) happily, running a short distance ahead with her small, clumsy gait before turning back around to wave at Kit. He smiled at her and pushed the stroller faster to catch up to her, reaching down to grab her hand and ensure she wouldn’t disappear into the underbrush.

There were a variety of creatures out , Kit caught glimpses of shy rabbits and even thought he caught a glimpse of a disappearing russet fox tail. Animals like deer and foxes were harder to spot, as they were more secluded, but he and Min tended to see small rodents and many small, twittering birds. 

Min liked to repeat the birdsong. She’d hear a tune, some random multi-note call, and immediately sing it back at the bird in her high-pitched, surprisingly accurate tone. Min was a very musical baby, which was unsurprising considering how Jem basically knew how to play every instrument Kit had ever set eyes on. They had to put multiple levels of security on the door to Jem’s music room because, somehow, Min kept managing to Houdini her way through that specific baby lock, like nothing could keep her tiny, toddler fingers with their pitiful motor skills from sneaking in and plucking carefully at instrument strings. It was weird, though: she seemed to understand how precious they were, and nothing ever got broken. 

She asked Jem a lot if she could also play the ‘wiolin,’ which Kit could see made Jem very pleased. Kit was glad that Jem had gotten a very musical child: Kit had decided very early on that the art of creating sounds was not for him in the slightest.

A short distance to his right, there was a bird sitting on a low-lying branch of a tree, close to the trunk. It chirped out one note repetitively. Min turned to it and mimicked the sound, and the bird cocked its head at her. Kit was fairly sure by the red crest on its head that it was a woodpecker, although he wasn’t certain.

_Ty would know exactly what that is._

The thought barged uninvited into his mind. Kit swallowed stiffly and tugged gently on Mina’s hand. “C’mon, Min, let’s go down to the pond.”

“To da pon’!” she repeated excitedly, and began to skip along beside Kit. 

It was impossible not to think about Ty. No matter how hard Kit tried, even after years of not speaking, he couldn’t just forget about him for a moment. He still talked with the other Blackthorns, and Emma, and he heard a lot more from Kieran due to his Faery blood issue, but the only person he still hadn’t talked to was Ty. They’d left things on bad terms, _very_ bad terms, and Kit had no idea how to approach any semblance of a conversation with him. He’d tried drafting letters to Ty, but every time they ended up in the trash. Everyone seemed to be waiting for him to do something about it, but he didn’t know what they wanted him to say. He didn’t know if Ty even wanted to talk to him. Kit got updates on Ty’s progress at the Scholomance, and he was infinitely proud of what Ty had accomplished, but how was he supposed to tell him that? With every day that they didn’t speak, the more Kit’s hopes for a rekindling of friendship sank.

Dru, the living Blackthorn that Kit was now closest to, would get odd every time Ty was brought up. Kit had the feeling that she was mad at him, and he didn’t blame her. It was all his fault, anyway. He just didn’t even know where to start fixing it.

He didn’t speak to Livvy much. Kit saw her sometimes, when she’d travel out and visit him, but they rarely exchanged words. He’d be playing with Min or something when he’d feel the oddest tingling at the back of his neck, and turn around only to see her ghost disappear. There were so many words caught up in the back of his throat for her, and for Ty, too. For everyone, really.

And by the Angel, he missed Ty.

He missed their easy communication, their ‘Sherlock and Watson’ dynamic, how he got to have the privilege of being Ty’s partner-in-crime. He missed times before the Accords Hall event, where he and Ty and Livvy would do all sorts of things together. He missed Livvy, of course, but he missed Ty _so much_. Ty, with his ways of talking that made perfect sense. Ty, with his penchant for solving mysteries. Ty, who Kit had thought was beautiful the first time they had met.

 _Stop thinking about him_ , Kit told himself. _It’s your own fault, you idiot. You brought this upon yourself._ Instead of thinking about silver-coin eyes and dark hair, he focused on Min as they walked to the pond.

The pond hosted a manner of waterfowl, small fish, and amphibians. If you paid close attention, you could see tiny minnows at the edge of the water, and sometimes the occasional ripple of a larger fish. It was a fairly large pond, with reeds and rushes lining patches of the water. Kit would have to be very careful with Mina when there were geese or swans present, because she had a tendency of running up to the wildlife if he didn’t stop her, and unlike most of the animals she approached, geese and swans were much less likely to run away and much more likely to attack her. He’d had a nasty experience with a goose before Min was born, the second or third time he’d gone down to the pond.

He did let her go up to the ducks, though. They tended to escape further into the center of the pond, where they were out of Min’s reach, and she had gone knee-deep into the water more than once when Kit wasn’t paying attention.

Kit clicked the brake on the stroller and walked with Min up to the edge of the pond, pointing out where he saw tadpoles or minnow in the clearer waters, and chasing with her after frogs in the hopes of catching one. He’d done it a couple times, let her hold them once he’d deemed them safe to hold, and then they let the frogs go. It was one of the reasons that Kit had started bringing wet wipes in the stroller.

The other reason he had to bring wet wipes was because Min had no regard for getting mud or other dirt on her hands, legs, and any skin available. Kit didn’t know how it happened, but somehow she always ended up at least a little bit muddy after their pond adventures.

“Kit! Issa duck!” Min’s chubby pointer finger waved wildly at one of the ducks. 

“You are a hundred percent correct,” Kit said to her, fondly watching and following a small distance behind her as she made her way around the edge of the water to get a closer look. 

All the other ducks scooted away into the water with their quick waddling steps, but the one Min had been pointed at refused to budge from where it sat. It remained in its position looking very disagreeable and letting out a vaguely angry _wu_ _ack_ as Mina approached it.

Kit narrowed his eyebrows. “Min, be careful-”

It was too late. The duck lunged forward once Min was within reach, snapping at her toddler fingers with vicious intent. She screeched and stumbled back, pulling her hand back and turning to run back to Kit.

He knelt down to come to her eye level, letting her run into the safety of his arms. Over her shoulder, he glared at the duck. It returned his look with the most anger Kit had ever seen a bird express. 

Mina was pouting, and Kit leaned back slightly so that he could take a look at her hand. There were a few droplets of blood, and the bite had gone through the skin on the side of her palm.

“It _bit_ me,” she said indignantly, and Kit was mildly surprised that there were no tears in her ears. Min wasn’t a typical small child in the sense that she rarely cried, but there was blood on her hand and she still didn’t seem all too upset.

“It sure did. Does it hurt? Let’s go home, and I’ll get you a band-aid.” 

Mina tilted her head to one side, considering. Then, she brightened. “Kit, gimme ewazee!”

“Give you what now?”

Her eyebrows furrowed in concentration as she separated the syllables. “E wat zee!”

_Ewatzee? What in the world is an-_

_Iratze._

Kit almost laughed out loud. 

He’d gotten a copy of the Gray Book so he could study the runes, and more than once, Mina had come to sit beside him and look at the pictures of the runes. He’d pointed out significant ones, but he hadn’t expected her to actually remember any of them. 

Iratzes were arguably the one of the most important runes in the whole book: the standard healing rune, that knit bone and skin back together. Kit had used them a couple times, although out here in Devon he didn’t really have much to do that would cause him to require an iratze.

“You can’t use iratzes yet, Min-Min. They’ll hurt you.”

She scowled at him. “Ewatzee!”

With a sigh, Kit picked up a twig and traced the curves and dashes of the rune in mud on the back of Min’s palm. As he did so, he remembered someone else drawing runes onto his own skin, feeling the prickling hot-cold sensation not only from the stele but also from the presence of the person drawing the rune-

Kit cut off his thoughts, chiding himself internally as he finished the nonfunctional mud iratze and dropped the stick. “There you go. Feel better?” Min nodded with satisfaction, and Kit stood to go grab the wet wipes. “Alright, now let’s get that off you. Your parents are literally going to kill me if they think I gave you a rune.”

Min sat in the stroller on the way home, sticking her tongue out at all of the ducks she saw and observing her injured hand with interest. She did the same things she always did: mimicked the birds, pointed at all the animals (except the ducks, which were now unworthy of her mention), and rambled on and on in her toddler’s lisp.

“Tessa?” Kit called when they got home, rifling through drawers.

“Yeah?” she responded from somewhere in the house.

“Where are the band-aids and disinfecting cream?”

“Why?” She appeared at the top of the staircase, leaning down to get a closer look at him. “Are you hurt? Is Mina hurt?” The last few questions must have caught Jem’s attention, because Kit immediately heard him from somewhere else as well.

“Mina’s hurt? How?”

Kit internally facepalmed. “Mina is _perfectly fine_ . She just got bitten by this really aggressive duck, and now I hate ducks, that’s _it_.”

Jem had also appeared next to Tessa, and Kit watched in bewilderment as they looked down at Min, then to each other, and then proceeded to burst into laughter. He eyed them, feeling slightly ridiculed, and finally came across a spare band-aid and a half-used tube of antibacterial cream in one of the hall cabinets. “C’mere, Min.”

She held out her hand as he carefully applied the cream and then stuck the band-aid over the wound. Min observed his handiwork, turning her hand around to look at it from all angles as he replaced the cream where he had found it and went to throw the band-aid wrapper away.

Tessa and Jem had stopped laughing, but were still giggling slightly as they came down the stairs. Kit glanced at them with one eyebrow raised in question.

“Sorry, Kit,” Tessa said with an amused smile. “It’s just that the Herondale boys have always seemed to have some kind of vendetta against ducks. The whole matter is a very long inside joke, we always used to speculate upon whether or not you might develop the same hatred.”

Kit wasn’t entirely sure whether or not she was joking, but it seemed like an oddly specific thing to pull his leg on. For a moment, he thought about the Herondales that Jem and Tessa had known, the ones he’d heard stories about: Will Herondale, Tessa’s first husband and Jem’s parabatai; James and Lucie Herondale, Tessa’s children long gone. He thought of Jace, too, who was probably the most famous Shadowhunter ever.

He wondered what the old Herondales thought of him. He wondered if they thought him worthy enough of a Shadowhunter to be a Herondale.

Then he reminded himself that it didn’t matter, because all the Herondales except for Jace were dead, so their opinions had no weight on Kit’s life. 

Jem picked Min up and rested her on one hip, tilting his head towards Kit. “Get ready for practice in ten minutes, okay?”

“Yep,” Kit responded, and went to go prepare to spend another day with his family.

**Author's Note:**

> ples leave kudos/comments! this is my first tsc fic, so i'm kind of dipping my toes in the water here.


End file.
